On Friday, the immunity of National Council President Wolfgang Sobotka (VP) is to be lifted, clearing the way for investigations into a tax case by the Economic and Corruption Prosecutor’s Office (WKStA). Sobotka himself welcomes this step in order, as he says, to be able to prove his innocence.
The parallelism of events is remarkable: Also on Friday, the committees of inquiry into the Covid financing agency COFAG (initiated by the SPÖ and FPÖ) and the “red-blue abuse of power” (requested by the ÖVP) will be officially set up in the National Council. Ultimately, Sobotka wants to exercise his right to chair both U-committees.
An imposition
The COFAG committee is supposed to examine whether the “super-rich” were given preferential treatment by the ÖVP when allocating aid funds. The Chancellor’s Party wants to scrutinize red and blue ministers between 2007 and 2020 with regard to tax money being used inappropriately.
There are many familiar faces among the party faction leaders appointed on Thursday: Jan Krainer (COFAG) and Eva-Maria Holzleitner (red-blue ministries) will be running for the SPÖ. In the FPÖ, Christian Hafenecker (COFAG) and Susanne Fürst (red-blue ministries) take the lead. The VP faction is led by Andreas Hanger in both U-committees. Neos and the Greens didn’t want to make a decision until the evening hours.
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Keeping a long story short
The announcement that they wanted to examine the matter briefly and concisely because of the upcoming National Council elections in the fall has been fulfilled. The constituent meeting for both U-committees is scheduled to take place on January 11th. After the files have been delivered and studied, the first persons to provide information are scheduled to appear in parliament on March 6th, initially in the COFAG committee, and a week later in that of the ÖVP. With seven survey days each, the last session is scheduled to be on May 23rd. Christa Edwards from the Vienna Higher Regional Court will serve as procedural judge on both committees.
Live broadcast
A first round of plans to broadcast U-committee meetings live made little progress. The ÖVP wants to orientate itself on the German model. This stipulates that a two-thirds majority of the parliamentary groups and the consent of the person providing the information are required to broadcast a witness survey, which is why there are practically never live images in the Bundestag. Krainer therefore spoke of a “disgrace to the ÖVP”. As with other reporting, the SPÖ wanted to “leave the decision to the media as to whether they should show a video of a survey or not.”
Author
Lucian Mayringer
Internal politics editor
Lucian Mayringer
